This one's fairly well-hidden, after all when I originally saw it a few conservative [ahem!] audience members walked out in disgust just as Brad Davis, Karen Allan and Jameson Parker decided to become 'close' friends - nothing shocking, but slightly too much back then and probably today. [Yes, it does somewhat touch on the world of the bi-sexual, or is it just experimentation? It is also a rather good movie about EMOTIONAL CONTACT between three young people.]
It covers THAT radical period in our history [Viet-Nam and all of that!] - students exploring and discovering various 'things'. Don't ever mix love and politics I guess!
BUT it's more of a memory play - along the lines of a modern 'Our Town'. These are also great minor performances in the movie - the conservative guy who turns radical with deadly results.
MISS Brad Davis spontaneous talent - gone too soon - something of the Dean quality there and Dean would probably have approved of this movie.
Also equally stellar? Mr. Parker and Ms. Allen for just daring to be so bold!
Bravo!
[Then there's also the somewhat period but 'based on fact' - "Jules and Jim" - not forgetting "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"]
They shared everything. why not each other?
The most resonant element of director Rob Cohen's film is the music score by Jim Steinman, which includes the melody that was later recorded as Total Eclipse of the Heart. Otherwise this tale of a supposed menage-a-tois between Harvard university students Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker is as dramatic as the cartoon opening and closing sketches. The screenplay by Ezra Sacks attempts coverage of the Vietnam era from 1967 to 1971 from a student activist point of view, but the tri-romance hardly seems from the same era since it isn't until towards the end that there is any suggestion of bigamy. There is also even less suggestion of homosexuality interest between Davis and Parker. When the 3 finally go into the same bedroom, the camera is left outside and the door closed. Their lack of involvement in activism is paralled with the radicalisation of a Texan boy scout who comes to Harvard at the same time and ends up a terrorist, and highlighted by a campus riot that comes out of nowhere. Even the Vietnam connection as a comment on the relationship and vice versa doesn't work. Sacks opens with Parker reuniting with Allen in "the present" before we start flashbacking to 1967, with Davis' absence pre-empting the outcome, and Cohen supplies matching love scene montages. Davis' has steam so apparently is more erotic and ends abruptly, whilst Parker's is set to Chances Are and ends more positively. Sacks has 2 lines I liked - a technique of breaking into a glass window "I saw it on I Spy or was it The Untouchables", though Cohen repeats it, and "Only men would come up with a draft lottery using balls". Utilising period TV and photographic images - the assassinations of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King - and a series of bad wigs, the only sense of reality and truth comes in a moment when someone sings the Star Spangled Banner to TV closure. Davis has the impossible charming/wild man role, not helped by his looking older than the others, and the best he can do is stare child-like for vulnerability. Allen doesn't have a strong screen persona so it's easy to think one is watching Amy Irving or Janet Margolin or Brooke Adams. Of the 3, Parker probably comes off best even when saddled with a Colonel Sanders look. His character's basic dullness is probably the reason he needs to be reunited with Allen. Even when the competition is Davis, anyone that prefers to experiment with rats rather than go to an Ingmar Bergman film is definitely worth reconsidering as a partner. Watch for Shelley Long as a photographer, and Daniel Stern, billed as Dan.
A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Bernardo Bertolucci DVD Release Date: Released the 13 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A handsome gigolo, Tim Whalen (Rob Lowe), meets a wealthy heiress, Olivia Lawrence (Meg Tilley), and her selfish and domineering stepfather is far from happy with their relationship. The local cop (Doug Savant) also expresses an interest in the Lawrence girl.
A subsequent string of murders puts each of the characters under suspicion and the wealthy Lawrence girl is suddenly caught up in a murderous plot that will see both her inheritance and her life put at risk.
'Masquerade' is a tense thriller containing a multitude of twists and turns that keep the viewer guessing to the end. It is in the same vein as 'Bad Influence', 'Sleeping with the Enemy', and 'Dead Calm'. I first watched this film when it was released on VHS in 1988 ... it is still as exciting today.
Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose is a flawed attempt to adapt Umberto Eco's highly convoluted medieval bestseller for the screen, necessarily excising much of the esoterica that made the book so compelling. Still, what's left is a riveting whodunit set in a grimly and grimily realistic 14th-century Benedictine monastery populated by a parade of grotesque characters, all of whom spend their time lurking in dark places or scuttling, half-unseen, in the omnipresent gloom. A series of mysterious and gruesome deaths are somehow tied up with the unwelcome attention of the Inquisition, sent to root out suspected heretical behavior among the monastic scribes whose lives are dedicated to transcribing ancient manuscripts for their famous library, access to which is prevented by an... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sean Connery - Christian Slater Director(s): Jean-Jacques Annaud DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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What would you do if you were in your mother's shoes? Spunky teenager Annabel Andrews would want her own shoes back. On Friday the 13th, Annabel found herself switching places with her uptight mother, Ellen. Suddenly she finds herself responsible for preparing a large dinner; take care of house renovations and driving her brother `Apeface' around. Meanwhile, Ellen has to drudge through a high school game of field hockey, eat food only Annabel could enjoy and perform in the big water-skiing extravaganza. Both of them are not too happy to have switched but the event sure makes them understand each other.
For the nations Bicentennial, the folks at Disney put out this high concept film and it was reason enough for fireworks. The film has much in common with earlier Disney... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Barbara Harris - Jodie Foster Director(s): Gary Nelson DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A strong ensemble and director Tom McCarthy's sweetly low-key observations make Sundance fave The Station Agent a treat. The film revolves around a reserved, somber dwarf (Peter Dinklage, immortalized by his brilliant ticked-off tirade in Living in Oblivion), a train enthusiast who inherits a small depot in rural New Jersey. He makes friends, somewhat reluctantly, with a group of eccentric locals: the guy at the coffee stand (buoyant Bobby Cannavale), an artist (Patricia Clarkson, impeccable as usual), a librarian (Michelle Williams). A few of the plot strands feel forced, but whenever the actors are simply playing off each other with McCarthy's nicely understated dialogue--which is most of the time--it ambles along winningly. You'll also learn more than you ever thought... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Peter Dinklage - Bobby Cannavale - Patricia Clarkson Director(s): Thomas McCarthy DVD Release Date: Released the 15 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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